My experience with the college has been absolutely abysmal.I started my application with the OCT in January of 2021 and emailed them regarding a few documents I was going to submit. After over a month of waiting, with no response, I submitted everything I had. I would also like to note that 9 1/2 months later I still have not received a response for those initial emails. I’ve also called 3 separate times and I’ve never once gotten through to a human being. My being disappointed and frustrated would be a huge understatement. That’s not all though.It’s now almost October and I am still waiting on my SECOND police check to be processed (the first one expired by the time they finally got around to receiving it). It’s been around three months since I sent that one in. I assume it will also expire by the time they receive it.I have classmates and friends who submitted their applications at the same time as me. Many of them have had their OCT certificate’s for months now. Some even have full-time jobs.I’ve even had to turn down an interview within my school board TWICE because I do not yet have a certificate. Not even a temporary one.My experience with this organization truly makes me concerned for the future of teaching in this province. It’s been so concerning that I’ve started looking at teaching careers out of province. It looks like Alberta’s teaching association has a 3.4 star rating on google so that’s an improvement over the OCT, and it seems like a good place to start.Rant over…Sincerely,Marc

You dedicate over 20 years to an organization, one that makes promises but when you actually need something, you never hear anything.This is putting strain our financial situation (no pay in over a month becauseof a simple document that is required.) But now this ignorance is affecting the mental welfare as well.How can you be teaching precious little children on a daily basis when youre concerned about taking another day off to be on hold. ?? Only to never be able to talk to anyone and get an answer.Please reach out.

It has been such a terrible and frustrating experience with this organization. I applied a few months ago and it took months for the documents page to become available. The registration process is not moving along because of my proof of identity. I included a middle name thats not on my passport and so they wont accept it. They also dont accept drivers license or citizenship card as proof of identity. They asked me for a birth certificate but Im not born in Canada and mine has a few minor errors so they wont accept it either... There is no way for me to get another copy of my birth certificate without traveling...I called them and waited 2.5 hrs to speak to someone about it and still no change or modification to the requirement... I emailed to explain and I got no response....I dedicate 6 years to become a teacher and now your are telling me I cant register in this province because of my middle name? I have submitted a request for them to omit the middle name even though it probably appears on my transcripts....Looks like it going to be a much longer process than it has to be...

A terrible inefficient organization. After emigrating November 2020 and applying for my OCT certification the process is not even half complete. Documents from my birth country were couriered and arrived at OCT 5 months ago, but these documents, which cost a lot and are time consuming to get, are still not received on my application profile. I have emailed every 3 weeks (6 times) and phoned regularly waiting upto 45 min each time and still I have had no response. I was so desperate that I traveled over 3hrs to the OCT building, still no progress.I have had to change careers in order to get a part income.This surely cant be good enough for a 1st world country.

Absolutely horrible organization that does not care about teachers. I have applied to get my certificate in May. They approved a few and more then half are still saying not received. They blame this horrible management on COVID and not being in the office but shouldnt working from home be more efficient? Maybe its time to hire some productive employees and make us teachers a priority? I have never in my life had to deal with such incompetency. I am now working as a teacher in a school, I do not have the proper documentation as far as Im concerned and I am being paid about 50% of what I should be making, this is not right..

I have been trying to call since 15 days. Hours and hours of wait time. No one responds. Emailed them no response!! What to do if i have questions and it is time sensitive. Hire more people to help your teachers. This is causing anxiety to people. Answer calls and faster!!

I have been trying to call but their voicemail is full and we are asked to hang up. Our yearly fees should make it possible for them to hire more staff in order to answer the phone or at least have a menu to direct our calls to the correct department. This is very poor service for the 270 000 teachers in Ontario. Many teachers have time sensitive requests.I have put in a request on July 6th and the OCT still has not processed my request. I am now teaching without pay in Nova Scotia because they have not received my documents from the OCT. I paid the 24$ for this request but still no service. This is putting a strain on my finances. Will the OCT reimburse or pay my late fees if I can not pay my bills ? A colleague of mine put in her request after me and got her documents on time. We are well past the 30 days of processing time.

Harassing and exploiting process. Ministry should look into their pathetic working attitude. I have no regret saying that they are just ruining the future of Canadian education system.

August 19, 2021: Phone lines are still dead due to a full mailbox, and Ontarios teachers totalling in the hundreds of thousands continue to pay hundreds in yearly fees for an organization that doesnt support us. How is it that many of us are still waiting for a full teaching licence when many LTO and permanent jobs are closing tomorrow (Friday, Aug. 20) and some boards (e.g., Peel SB, TCDSB, to name a couple) do not recognize the legitimacy of the temporary certificate? This whole situation is a mess and its going to result in many financial hardships for teachers and many placement issues within local communities.UPDATE: A few of my colleagues who graduated with me in the same cohort and who had their application processed days, if not MONTHS after mine, got approved either immediately or within two business days. The evidence speaks for itself: the OCT does not recognize nor respect the process of a queue. What an embarrassment to the profession.

It appears I may never obtain my ontario certificate, despite teaching for 20+ years and providing every document requested. Although MOST agents have been empathetic and helpful, each one gives a different answer for the delay (been working on certification for 20 years now, on and off) the wait times for responses to email, etc. is unacceptable. NO business would survive with this kind of customer service. Id rather deal with CRA than OCT. any day.

By reading all the negative reviews here, Im wondering why such organization still exist? Why do all the teachers or the people who want to be a teacher must to have OTC certification in order to work? Who authorize OTC such power?

I wrote an email last year. No answer till now. I’ve been on hold for 45 minutes so far. Nothing. Everyone else is still working so how come oct has no time to pick up phone or answer emails?

I have had a horrible experience with trying to get my documentation looked at so that I can have my certification to teach. Nothing is clear on the website and no one is looking at my documents. Why have all the negative reviews been deleted off of this? My log-in for the website also does not work at all and I have yet to have someone take a look at it.

Due to lack of service the past 4 months (email and phone calls not anwered), not being able to get access to anything, OCT should consider reimbursing/pro-rating our membership fees. Members have received limited to no updates - they could at least email all members to let us know whats going on.

On hold for over 2 hours. Michelle said yes all documents are in. A week later receive an email saying they are missing transcripts that were sent in May, now on hold for another 2 hours waiting to get some clarification. Such poor service, not sure what we are paying for as future teachers. Can’t something be done!

Heigh fees, no customer service, can’t get documents verified. Analog processes in a digital world! Very disappointing… mentally exhausted getting qualified to teach in Ontario.

I hate writing negative reviews. But if it can benefit an organization to improve their customer service then Id like to voice my frustration and opinion.I order a Statement of Good Standing to be mailed to Alberta Education on 5/12/2021 12:46:44 PM. Its July 2nd today 51 days and my order is still not processed. Alberta Education rejected my subbing application because I do not have my teaching permit there.This is costing me job opportunities. After a month and a half of giving them benefit of the doubt I luckily got hold of a receptionist who was kind enough to tell me that there is a delay because of covid. I can understand that if its communicated better. If I knew I could at least give Alberta Education a heads up. But there is no communication on OCTs end. I even sent them an email and as of today no reply.At this point I feel that OCT is abusing the excuse of COVID. I mean I called multiple times and each time Ive been put on hold. This has been happening for past 51 days. As of writing this review Ive been on hold for over 11 minutes. Just goes to show you how frustrating this service is.Again I hate to cause anyone harm in business because of my review but this is costing me job opportunities.As a contrast Ive been in constant communication with Alberta Education, and the longest I had to wait for a reply was a week and that was because the person was on vacation.Im incredibly disappointed and frustrated. Oh, its been 15 minutes I took a little break from typing and Im still on hold. Average hold times before I gave up 30 min.

I have been trying for over a month to connect with OCT. Cannot get through by phone and what I need done, cannot be done over the internet. I would give zero stars if I could! This service is terrible.

Key institution running like a banana republic.Above hour wait time to get somebody on the phone. The COVID excuses is too easy. They were bad even before the pandemic.The is the problem with public organisations with no checks and balances. They can allow themselves to be free of basic customer service standard and in some cases deprieved of courtesy.Heres hoping that the day comes when these important institutions are held to the same level of standards as they hold their teachers (and must continue to do so)

Worse service provided by them, it seems like they don’t care for teachers. If you are in need of anything from the college they aren’t responding and you are sitting over there helpless trying to reach the customer service. It seems like they are on vacation!

This is a farce of an organization. They have rarely represented the interests of teachers and students. They are a political prop. This has been highlighted most recently by the government dissolution of the ELECTED council, to replace it with an APPOINTED one. Could you please stop calling yourselves the College of Teachers? There are no teachers among you anymore.

There is possibly one person working at OCT and they are surely on their day off whenever I call. How much do we pay the college year after year and what is the actual service we get for it? Hmmmm. Let me see...

Horrible service, They aren’t being helpful. There is for sure no service provided by them. I am in need of the documentation and they are not even responding to the call. Long hours of waiting time on the phone. Really fed up. what a bad service

This is unacceptable. Ive been calling and writing for months, with no answer! Hire more people, answer emails (which will encourage people to write more, instead of waiting for hours for an agent to MAYBE pick up the phone). This shouldnt be the only place to obtain information and certification. Teachers need to work too!

Dont call them because you are put on hold for an hour or more. Often you just give up before someone answers you. This is unacceptable. They deserve 0 stars.

Pretty helpful. Pierre was excellent and described everything so well.He walked me through a complicated process.

I tried to pay my fees on the Ontario College of Teachers Website. I could not because last year I paid my 2020 fees by error in late December 2019. There is no receipt for 2020 because it in on my 2019 Tax receipt. Every time I went to checkout I was bounced out. I was told to contact the College. I tried 2 times. I waited on the phone with a mans voice telling me to continue to hold. I held on hold for over 50 minutes before giving up. I was told continuously to go to the website. The website could not help me either. What am I to do? My fees keep increasing, now I have to pay for a printed version of my certificate and OCT card and also a fee for the Professionally Speaking Magazine. Where do my $170.00 fees go? This is ridiculous!! What do I do in an emergency?

Been on hold for almost 2 hours and emailed months ago with no reply. Currently at 3 hours !

They never answer the phone! They take MONTHS to respond to mail!

Extremely disappointed with the organisation.Hours and hours of hold with no reply. Just a money making business. Paying 170$ every year for nothing. They need teachers we dont need them.

From what I hear internally this is all looks with no actual content, kind of like a bag of chips.

Absolutely disgusted... I tried to call this place so many times. The waiting time is more than one hour. How can it be possible for someone to wait over more than one hour where they give you an evasive answer? How is it possible that a working person spares one hour everything to get hold of somebody from the OCT??? The slowness of the service is awful

Ontario college of teachers organization please wake up, we teachers need you. You guys are freaking out from your job and we are struggling over here with our queries.

Dont waste your time calling the number. Today the hold time was over 2.5 hours and still no response. The response time to emails is equally abysmal. Hello....

NO STARS! A mickey mouse organization if there ever was one that takes your money yet gives nothing tangible back...including their time. Waste of money!

I’ve been trying to contact them for months with no answers on the phone and no reply to my countless emails.

I have been waiting on hold for over an hour. I dont have time to sit on hold for this long. We pay our $170 a year, for what? I dont feel the college is necessary. They say they have extended hours for us to contact them, what about hiring extra people to man the phones and answer our questions.

I spent 1.5 hours on hold, when I finally got through they just brushed me off and didnt help with any of my queries. Totally unprofessional.

This one of the worst professional body in the entire Canada.

One of the worst institutions of Ontario, very unprofessional in updating teacher s records

I have been connected with OCT since I came to Canada.

Staff is awsome a d helpful. They guide you well.

Needs a new name. Doesnt represent teachers -- presents an image of teachers as predators (cf. current magazine cover)

Horrible service! Always hours on hold, take months to upload documents. Just so unprofessional that they treat us like this.

Absolutely disgusted. Have tried daily to reach the OCT for three weeks and have sat on hold for over half an hour each time before eventually giving up. I emailed last week - no response. Despite being a member for 23 years, I cannot reach anyone at the college. Have asked several colleagues how they get through and they unanimously said it’s impossible. Hope people are prepared to drive into Toronto if they ever need assistance from their own college.

Absolutely one of the most terrible institutions out there especially if you are a new immigrant. They would charge you hefty amount of money for evaluation of foreign credentials and conveniently keep pushing the deadline by four months every time with no proper explanation.So much for a struggling profession in Ontario.

I am trying to contact by phone to ask for help in resetting the password. It is taking a long time for someone to respond.

I participate yesterday to their general meeting, they completely avoid to answer properly to inconvenient questions about the challenges that teachers are facing in our classroom environment. They use a wooden language that remind me perfectly about the Communist Party Congresses. I am wondering why they collect members fee when they dont even represent the interests of their members, they should collect fees from the public and the government not from teachers.

What a waste of an organization.... I wish we could get rid of this body since they are absolutely useless to this profession!

Communication is almost nonexistent. It takes 10 days for them to reply to an email, and if you want to call them be prepared to be on hold indefinitely.

Took over a month to respond to email. Won’t consider giving OTs a membership refund when schools have been closed for 3 months.

Very helpful and friendly staffGuided us perfectlyParking might be expensive but is very near to the location

I just saw that OCT wants to increase our dues by 20% to pay for their mortgage. We should not be paying for a building. If OCT cant afford to be in the building they are in, then they need to downsize to a smaller building. Teachers should absolutely not be paying fees towards the mortgage of a building!!!

Well organized office in prime place in Toronto

Visited for the first time and the lady at reception guided me well. Satisfied

Just one word for them Unprofessional

Very helpful

This organization is unnecessary, greedy and just sucks.

Friendly staff and atmosphere

Unhelpful for immigrants.

I think its a necessary institution for teacher quality management